Soloing While Injured

In the back of my mind since I starting living full-time in my trailer and traveling around with no home base, I’ve wondered what would happen if I got in an accident and broke something like an ankle or a leg. It literally never occurred to me that breaking a finger would cause the same kind of commotion.

When I fell while running on Memorial Day 2017, the first thing I did was roll over and check ankles, knees, hips, and pelvis, to make sure I could walk. Only then did my brain register that something was screaming in pain. One look at my left hand and I almost threw up – my ring finger was at a right angle to the other fingers. My first, second, and third reactions were all “Oh, shit, this isn’t good.”

From this point on, my daily reality changed fast and hard. I ended up with left hand in a cast for 4 weeks. That was not awesome news for a solo vagabond.

My cast after four weeks, a little worse for the wear

The kind intervention of a wise friend got me moved to a residence hotel for a week, where I mostly slept, watched bad TV movies, and microwaved meals whenever I got hungry. By day 5, I was feeling more like myself, and began figuring out how to get to the Alto camping rally that was the whole reason I had been heading east. I cashed in a slew of hotel points (via a credit card) for a week of Holiday Inn Express rooms to get me from Indiana to North Carolina. I hitched up once and then just parked my rig in hotel lots overnight, while I ate takeaway food and showered in big hotel bathrooms where I could hold my cast over my head to keep it from getting wet.

Bella and Breeze in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn Express in Kentucky

After the rally, I got my cast off in Lancaster, PA, and started physical therapy while staying with kind and patient friends. The second week there, I moved to a nearby KOA to test how the weak and sort-of-still-useless hand would do back in the Alto.

I spent the rest of July and August on Cape Cod, housesitting for a friend and then driveway surfing on her property while I got in a full 6 weeks of physical therapy. By the time Labor Day came around, the hand was about 75% of its former self and I headed off the Cape and out of PT with a list of exercises and tools to keep working it on my own.

My first campsite after getting the cast off. Point of pride to put up the awning, just to prove to myself that I could do everything solo.

It’s been 12 months now since “The Fall That Changed Everything” and my hand is mostly OK and I can do most things with it, although that ring finger is never going to be what it was (some nerve damage remains).

Things that worked:

Having generous, kind friends. From Terre Haute (a friend since 8th grade) to Pennsylvania (a couple I’ve known years and years) to Massachusetts (30+ years of friendship and counting), knowing that people had my back was a relief. And at the rally, everyone gave me a pass for not bringing food to the potlucks, and that was a big relief.

Emergency fund. Knowing I could pay for a week in a decent hotel, buy takeout food, and not have to scramble for funds or run up a big credit card bill was a relief. One less thing to stress me out during what was already a challenging time.

Good medical insurance. I was on COBRA from my last employer and that helped lessen the financial impact. The total cost of the accident (ER, doctors, x-rays, meds, physical therapy) was just north of $12,000. My out of pocket? $1000.

A credit card that piled up points towards hotel stays. One of the best pieces of advice I got before starting to full-time was to find a decent hotel chain, get their affinity credit card, and spend on it till I built up a solid bank of points, enough for a few weeks of rooms. I ended up using 15 nights worth of points and still had a cushion for future needs.

Things I would do differently:

Not fall. Seriously. The sidewalks in that part of Terre Haute had already given me pause because they were so cracked and uneven. I should have been listening to my gut and changed my route.

Accept offers of help faster and with more grace. I was fighting so hard to prove I could do everything with one hand that I was often brusque when people offered to lend a hand. I’ve learned to think before I automatically say no, or at least I try to.

Biggest takeaway: when vagabonding, expect the unexpected.

Everything is broken

This happened my first day back in the trailer. Yep, that’s my trailer tire. Ran over some road junk. Honestly, I just laughed when I realized my tire had blown out. What else can you do?!